The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology.
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one transport layer protocol often used in a network in order to transport a byte stream; and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is another transport layer protocol used in a network for transporting multiple message streams in an optimized manner. A router supporting SCTP allows the router to communicate with a peer router using SCTP.